Warm
by TeaRoses
Summary: Mangaverse AU romance about Pip Bernadette and Seras Victoria. If one event had gone differently, what might the future have been like? One-shot. (P x S)


Disclaimer: Hellsing belongs to Kohta Hirano, not to me.

_Written for and dedicated to Thess. The request was an AU ficlet about Seras and an older Pip. My main premise is that Pip survived Jolene's attack, but I took a few necessary guesses at what might happen in general for background._

Warm

At the age of sixty, Pip Bernadette still lived in a small house in London not far from Hellsing manor. He had never fully recovered from the wounds Jolene had given him. At the time he had reluctantly given up command of the Wild Geese and had never returned to active duty.

But he had served loyally, more than could be expected from a mercenary, and Sir Integral Hellsing had given him a pension and kept him on as a military consultant.

Everything, of course, had changed by now. Many Hellsing operatives were dead in battle or through natural causes, though Integra herself held on, waiting to give over the reins to her ward. Millennium and its ageless leaders had been defeated. Iscariot was also kept in check by a secret truce, though it was still run by an aging Maxwell, with most others scattered in silence to monasteries or convents. Anderson himself lived on at his orphanage, and only in theory kept up his blood-feud with an increasingly reclusive Alucard.

Even without an organized opposition there was enough vampiric activity to keep Seras Victoria and a reduced Hellsing army occupied. She had introduced other females into the ranks, with Integral insisting only on sensible uniforms. Seras herself kept her skirt for old time's sake and a feeling that it befitted a vampire to wear the same clothing.

So she spent her time fighting, and training humans as best she could, and of course with Pip. He had always been one of the only humans who was not afraid of her, and dared even to flirt with her, and by the time of the attack by Jolene it had been acknowledged between them as love.

Love between a vampire and a human, even a young vampire and a very brave human, is a complex matter. There was always a great deal left unsaid by both of them, as if the ironies and uncertainties in the situation could not bear the light of day.

But while love does not conquer all it conquered enough of death, unlife, and bloodlust to keep Seras Victoria and Pip Bernadette together over the years. She visited him regularly, and if there were no proper name for what they had that was hardly the point.

She had asked him straight out on the night they first made love what he really thought of her being a vampire. She knew he would probably not tell the truth, and he probably didn't. He brushed it off at the time by saying she might be cold but he would try to warm her up. There was no real way to let such an issue drop but if he was her lover and did find her beautiful there were ways to pretend it didn't matter.

She often worried she must keep her sexual passion in check lest it turn to darker urges but that didn't seem to happen either. She kept herself fed on the bags Hellsing continued to supply her and still refrained from killing. There was a part of her that wondered if she could abuse a human if she had that hunger or anger, but she told herself that she was not her master. Certainly she never put Pip's name into that question.

Seras also wondered if Pip had ever wanted a wife and children. He has always said that was not the life for a mercenary, but he had retired young, and many of the Wild Geese had become domesticated. But Pip would joke to her that all he wanted was a sexy vampire girl to love, and Seras didn't think there were many others who could say that so sincerely.

He did ask her after a time if it bothered her to watch him grow older. She told him no, and that was the absolute truth. The wrinkles around his eyes and the way the old wounds gradually affected him more and more meant little. It was her own unchanging reflection which disturbed her.

So they spent their time together making love and speaking of each other, the memories of battles, and their own little games and jokes. For his sake she kept up with news and culture, though practical matters prevented them from going out often in public. Some of what they shared were little things she could do with no one else. She liked to lie down with her head on his chest, and to listen to him speak to her in French, and to brush out and rebraid his graying hair.

She had her own accomplishments, being by default a leader at Hellsing. There were still battles and she was always the victor. But she kept enough humanity to still deal with other people, an ability her master had lost long ago and did not seem to miss.

She wondered if that would change once Pip was gone. Perhaps there would less humanity to hold on to then, and less reason to bother doing so. Practically she had always known this, that there was no escaping the death of Pip. Just as all the Wild Geese would die, and everyone else. Integral Hellsing and then her ward and then Hellsing itself would someday pass, and it was very possible that by then Seras herself would still not have lost her last fight.

These thoughts were her reality but she escaped it as often as she could. She still had her love; though his years with her might be a fraction of the long unlife she was already beginning to dread. So she turned to him, to his kisses and the accented voice in her ear, and if he could not be always young for her he was always caring, always playful and always warm.


End file.
